David Morleyhttps://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/morleyd
en-GB(C) 2018 David Morleyhttps://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssDavid MorleyDavid MorleyWarwick Blogs, University of Warwick, https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk120In Memory of Edwin Morgan by David Morleyhttps://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/morleyd/entry/in_memory_of/
<p class="answer">Writing about web page <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/26/poetry" title="Related external link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/26/poetry">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/26/poetry</a></p>
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<div align="left"><strong>FIRES</strong> </div>
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<p class="poem">What is that place, my father and my mother,<br />
you have gone to, I think of, in the ashes<br />
of the air and not the earth, better to go there<br />
than under stones or in any remembrance<br />
but mine and that of others who once loved you,<br />
fewer year on year. It is midsummer<br />
and till my voice broke, Summer suns are glowing<br />
I loved to sing and One fine day to hear from<br />
some thin wild old gramophone that carried<br />
its passion across the Rutherglen street, invisibly<br />
played again and again - I thought of that person,<br />
him or her, as taking me to a country<br />
far high sunny where I knew to be happy<br />
was only a moment, a puttering flame in the fireplace<br />
but burning all the misery to cinders<br />
if it could, a sift of dross like what we mourn for<br />
as caskets sink with horrifying blandness<br />
into a roar, into smoke, into light, into almost nothing.<br />
The not quite nothing I praise it and I write it.</p>
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<p>Edwin Morgan died 19th August 2010 (see good piece by Sarah Crown at link above)</p>
<p><img border="0" alt="Edwin Morgan in 1950s" src="http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/images/morleyd/2010/08/19/edwin_morgan_kraszkiewicz5.jpg?maxWidth=500" /></p>
<p>I met Eddie Morgan a few times and invited him to read in Huddersfield for the 1995 World Poetry Festival (Andy Darby now&nbsp;of the Lancaster Litfest also played a huge role here). I was very fond of&nbsp;Eddie and his poetry and translations. He was 75&nbsp;when he read for the festival&nbsp;and had all the energy and elan of someone far younger; he was not world-weary in the slightest, but illuminated with life and full of love. Over dinner we managed to discuss Mandelstam, Mayakovsky,&nbsp;Blok, Montale, Baudelaire, the Scottish Poetry Renaissance, freshwater ecology, mathematics and the varieties of midge found in Fife. &nbsp;He was and is a hero, and I urge you to read him. I love this photo of him from the '50s (courtesy of the Scottish Poetry Library). Goodbye and good rest, Eddie.</p>Edwin MorganPoetryThe Practice Of PoetryThu, 19 Aug 2010 11:15:55 GMTDavid Morleyhttps://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/morleyd/entry/in_memory_of/#comments094d735829a72d04012a8a0ff376296c2